The pilot study was conducted on 25 July 2011 at a rural public high school at the researcher place of employment. All grade 12 learners (27 in total) in the school, which is situated in the Vhembe district of the Limpopo Province South Africa, participated in the pilot study.
As it was indicated in Chapter 3, the pilot study sought to establish the following:
• To assess the feasibility of the questionnaire and test as data collection instruments.
• To avoid any problems that could arise during the actual data collection process.
• Assess the clarity of the questionnaire items, instructions and layout.
• Establish the time taken to complete the questionnaire.
• Establish a guideline for the coding/classification system for data analysis.
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• To ensure if any part of the researcher’s data collection process for the study was too difficult or too easy, or impossible to follow.
• To determine the most effective measures of collecting the most useful data in the least amount of time.
After the instruments were piloted, the following issues were established and considered for revision of the final questionnaire and test, which were employed for the study:
With regard to the test instrument, items in Question 1 of the Sentence Transformation Test were shortened from 15 to 10 statements, which required learners to “Re-write sentences starting with words given”, but “ensuring that meaning is not changed”. For example, a sentence, such as, She runs faster than I do, called on learners to re-write and complete the sentence, starting with, I don’t …
Furthermore, there was total of 10 items in question 2 of the pilot test. After the pilot, 5 items remained. These items required the respondent learners to rewrite sentences, joining them appropriately to form single statements. For example, sentences like, The man did not die. The man was bitten by a snake. The reason for the reduction of these items was that some questions were similar; for example, sentence number 10 and 21 both tested direct and reported speech.
Therefore, one sentence had to be dropped, as the respondents were likely to respond in the same way to both sentences. Still on the same question sentences 4, 9 and 21 would produce similar responses. To this effect:
• Sentence number 4 read: We were well prepared, so were not afraid to face the other team. The respondents had to rewrite the sentence stating with the word Having …
• Sentence number 9: She was tired after work, so she decided to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. The respondents had to rewrite the sentence starting with the word, Being …
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• Sentence number 21: My father is a doctor, so he is often called at night.
The respondents had to rewrite the sentence starting with the phrase, Being a doctor …
After the pilot was conducted, the test items in question 2 were revised as follows:
• Sentences 3 and 5 required learners to use the same relative pronoun that or which. Sentence 3 read: The bicycle was new. My brother bought the bicycle.
• Sentence number 5: The cow has died. Father bought the cow last week.
• Sentences 6 and 8 also required the respondents to use the same relative pronoun [whom].
• Sentence 6 read: The man is my uncle. I spoke to the man.
• Sentence 8: The boy was not Raymond. I saw the boy.
Lastly, questions that sought information about the same type of L2 input were put together.
After the pilot study, a revised questionnaire and test (see Appendix 1) sought to investigate and gather the following information:
Initially, the questionnaire consisted of three parts. The first part investigated biographical details of the respondent learners. The second part investigated the sources of language input. The third part, which was the Sentence Transformation Test, consisted of 2 questions, in which 15 and 10 options respectively, required learners to perform various tasks of sentence transformation. In particular, the questionnaire sought to elicit:
• Biographical data; for example, learners’ names and their surnames; grade;
gender; age; home language as well as any other languages spoken by the learners other than their home language.
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• An insight into other sources of L2 interference other than the respondents L1; for example, television programmes learners watch; radio stations learners listen to; types of magazines and newspapers learners read.
• Evidence of L1 interference; examples on these sections were clarified in the discussion of the test instrument, which is given in the next section below.
With regard to the feasibility of the questionnaire and test as data collection instruments, the pilot study revealed that there was no obvious challenge as no setbacks were experienced during the pilot. Thus, learners did not show evidence of struggling to deal with the questions posed in the instrument. There were also no ambiguities associated with the questionnaire’s instructions and layout. The learners did not take a long time to finish responding, as the first learner completed the questionnaire within 40 – 45 minutes and the last one, just on 1 hour. The pilot effectively served as a guideline for the coding/classification system for data analysis. Furthermore, no parts were found to be too difficult, too easy, or impossible to follow. Hence, the test was considered the most effective measure for getting the most useful data in the least amount of time as it was envisaged.
After revising the instruments, the final research was conducted on Saturday, 28 November 2011. All the respondents were grade 12 learners at the time of data collection. Even though there were a total number of 65 learners in the grade 12 class in question, it was expected that only 58 would participate in this study. On the day of data collection, only 55 learners turned up to complete the questionnaire and sentence transformation test. The next sections present and discuss the results of the data collection for the study.
4.3 Results and Analysis